


Perfect

by TheOracle



Series: Grace Under Pressure [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Fluff, Short One Shot, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23790622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOracle/pseuds/TheOracle
Summary: The Sole Survivor is doing all she can to help piece the Commonwealth back together and is struggling with everything that entails. Sometimes though, you don't have to aim for perfection for it to find you.---A little one-shot fluff with Nick being his adorable self---
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Nick Valentine
Series: Grace Under Pressure [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719127
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working really hard on my Sanctuary settlement recently. Building, scrapping, shifting and then changing my mind and doing it all over again. Even after I'm happy, all the npcs just crowd in the doorways and move from chair to chair. It can get discouraging. I wrote this so my poor character could get a little satisfaction from all her hard work. This is how I like to imagine it's really like in her little piece of wasteland. Also Nick, because he's the heart of Fallout 4 and if there's one thing that could make the sorry mess of the Commonwealth worthwhile, it's him. Still mad Bethesda wouldn't let me love him. x

Grace couldn’t think of anything more satisfying than creating something with your own two hands. Well, nothing except watching the people you built it for actually using and appreciating it.

Preston was sat with a few of the other settlers around a table she’d welded the third leg back on to, mopping up stew with bread she’d baked that morning and drinking clean, safe water from a filtration system she’d help build. Part of her couldn’t help but see the mistakes she’d made. The table had a slight tilt because the broken leg was shorter once welded. The bread hadn’t quite gotten that prewar rise, the flour grinder they’d made not getting the razorgrain down to a fine enough texture. The water still had an oily metallic taste to it due to the old evaporator coils they’d used.

It was hard not to focus on the flaws. She was a perfectionist in her old life. Never quite happy with anything she made, never able to stop tweaking, or worse, scrapping and restarting everything in frustration. If there was one good thing that came from this new world, it was that there was no time for perfection. Any shelter was better than being caught out in a rad storm. Any food infinitely more palatable to scavenging rotten meat from a bloatfly infested radstag. Any water preferable to forcing down stagnant sludge from irradiated puddles that burnt the throat and destroyed your insides. The wasteland really knew how to put the need for perfection into perspective.

“Cap for your thoughts?” she heard a familiar voice rumble at her side.

Startled out of her thoughts, Grace turned to see Nick leaning on the bar beside her, his yellow eyes glowing in the dim light. She wondered how long he had been stood there, watching her watching the others.

“I was just thinking that this is the closest I’ve been to normal since I stumbled out the vault.”

Nicks eyes flitted over her face for a few seconds before a laugh from across the room drew his gaze. Sturges had obviously said something funny, and beside him, MacCready choked on a laugh while he took a swig of beer. The smooth sounds of Ella Fitzgerald crooned from a radio in some darkened corner. The low key murmur of voices filled the room. Mama Murphy dozed in her armchair.

“Yeah, it sure is a mighty fine evening,” Nick said after a moment. “You should be proud of yourself kid. You’ve done an awful lot of good here. Helped an awful lot of folks.”

“Always more to do though,” she responded, not able to keep the sigh from her voice. “Feels like once one thing is done, there’s a hundred more things waiting in the queue behind it.”

“Hey now, let’s not get all caught up thinkin about that. Look at what you’ve got right now. A damn comfy place to sleep. Food you can actually stomach. Beer than doesn’t taste like groundwater. Right now, we’re livin as good as life can get out here.”

It was funny how Nick’s thoughts stepped along the same well worn tracks of her own. Not surprising though. He’d climbed the same mountain she was still struggling up. He remembered what the world use to be. What was lost. Grace turned to take in his full profile. He was metal and wires barely covered in worn out scraps of synthetic skin. He was the closest thing to the comfort of the old world that she’d found in the wastes.

“What? No mention of the best company in the Commonwealth a gal could ask for?” she said with a smile. He shot a sardonic smirk back.

“Well, I figured that’d go without saying. There’s few people I’d drop everything for just to chase their coattails round the whole damn ‘wealth.”

Nick turned his eyes back to hers. It always baffled her how something made of filament and alloy could transform into such a warm, expressive gaze. She felt heat creeping up into her cheeks and had to look away. Over the radio the trumpet solo from the Harry James Orchestra wailed it’s wistful tune into the smoke filled room.

“You know what would make this perfect?” she said, barely thinking before the words came spilling out her mouth.

“Hmm?”

“Dance with me?”

Grace couldn’t remember seeing Nick so flustered before. She watched as he opened his mouth several times to respond, the words seemingly getting stuck in his throat before he’d force them back down to try again. His eyes flickered back and forth, questioning, like he was waiting for her to take it back, or to hit him with a punchline.

“You don’t need to…” she started but then he jumped like he’d stepped on a live wire.

“No I eh…I’d like that,” he stuttered a little and then, catching himself, he coughed and straightened his tie. “I mean, if you like to, I’d eh…well I’d like to dance with you too.”

She tried to think of something witty to say about his sudden loss of his trademark charm but failed. He was looking at her so earnestly. Grace took his good hand in hers and, turning from him, led him a handful of steps out to a gap between the rusted tables and mismatched chairs. Turning back, she smoothed her left hand over his shoulder as he moved closer to her, hesitating a second before resting his bare metal hand lightly on her hip.

“Feel free to step on my toes,” he chuckled, a little bashful and not quite meeting her eyes. “It’s not like I’d feel it much anyhow.”

Instead she curled her hand around his shoulder, pulling herself closer to him, pressing her cheek up against the ragged edges of his own. The top of her head brushed the brim of his hat. He brought their linked hands up as he started to lead. It was a slow dance, really just a shuffle of steps from side to side as they swayed together. Everything quietened to a hush as Kitty Kallen’s voice sweetened the air.

_‘Never thought that you would be, standing here so close to me, there’s so much I feel that I should say…’_ she warbled like a songbird.

They turned slowly on spot, worn linoleum scuffing under foot. Grace closed her eyes and tucked her head into the dip where his neck met his shoulder. She could feel gaps in his plating under the worn fabric of his coat. He exhaled a little sigh, but there was no rise and fall of his chest. No heart hammering against ribs like hers was.

They danced as another song came on, then another and another after that. Outside the stars wheeled over an oil-stained sky as another day ended in the Commonwealth. The wasteland really knew how to put perfection into perspective, but it didn’t stop those rare, fleeting moments when perfection happened, all by itself.


End file.
